1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to storage devices for computer systems. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for enabling wireless peer-to-peer file transfer between storage devices and computer systems.
2. Related Art
Recent improvements in computing power and wireless networking technology have significantly increased the capabilities of portable computing devices, such as laptop computers, tablet computers, portable media players and smartphones. These portable computing devices typically include a number of bus interfaces, such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces, which can be used to connect the portable computing device to various peripheral devices, such as non-volatile storage devices, I/O devices, network devices, printers, power adapters, and even other computer systems.
Technological advances have also produced smaller form factors for the portable computing devices. Such form factors may enhance the portability of the portable computing devices but may also reduce the number of physical bus interfaces available on the devices. For example, the available USB ports on a laptop computer may be occupied by a keyboard and mouse. As a result, other USB devices such as external hard drives, printers, and/or digital cameras may be connected to the laptop computer only after the keyboard and/or mouse are unplugged. In other words, use of portable computing devices with peripheral devices may be negatively impacted by the limited number of physical ports on the portable computing devices.
Hence, what is needed is a mechanism for enabling communication between a portable electronic device and a peripheral device without requiring the use of a physical connection between the portable electronic device and the peripheral device.